The present invention relates to a method of assigning relations between information items of mutually different tables, and in particular, to a method of, when information items are in a relation in which the information items are related to each other, generating the information items and definitions of the relation therebetween and a retrieval processing method and a retrieval processing apparatus for retrieving the information items thus related. In particular, the present invention relates to information processing in which hierarchic structure to total data to measure business results of an enterprise or a firm or relating information to obtain knowledge information in the knowledge management is not held in a master, but is stored in an external table as information relating masters to each other.
To develop, for example, application programs in an object-oriented scheme, required information items and relations therebetween are analyzed to define an information model using, for example, a diagram representatively associated with a Unified Modeling Language (UML). Using the information model, programs and databases (DB) are designed. Particularly, in the database designing phase, in the case Table A is to be related to Table B, one must determine a key to be defined in common with Table B, and must define the key in Table A. Therefore, the definitions of relations between information items are required to be manually re-designed according to the information model.
FIG. 2 shows an example of a database designing process using UML in which an information model obtained as a result of the information analysis is developed into constituent components of database (DB) structure. According to UML, a term “class” is employed to indicate “factory”, “cost division”, “product group”, “product”, “sales” or the like. A system analyzer defines class names for the respective classes and defines information items of various attributes for each class. The analyzer also represents relations between the classes using, for example, relation type lines to thereby define multiplicity of relations between the classes. Thanks to classes, the information items are classified into groups.
For a class, like a product group of FIG. 2, having relations with other classes in the upper and lower positions, when it is desired to retrieve the class through the relations during a retrieval, it is required to dispose the information of the relations between the classes in one and the same table in the database. Therefore, the database tables are required to be designed in consideration of the operation during the retrieval phase. For example, a factory master and a product group master include a shared attribute “factory code” in example of the configuration shown in FIG. 2.
There also exists a disadvantage viewed from application programs as below. For an application program to obtain target information, the relations defined in the respective tables are required to be known in advance. If a change takes place in the relations between the information items, it is required to examine the relations between the tables to again conduct the database designing phase.
To remove the problem, JP-A-2003-150644 describes a technique, i.e., a relating information management system in which various information items are managed by establishing relations therebetween. The system at least includes a relation management table to store relations between a parent and a child using identifier information of various information and a retrieval processing module to execute retrieval processing to retrieve various information in a direction from the parent to the child and in a direction from the child to the parent by use of the relations in the relation management table, according to specified information and a specified range. The identifier information includes an identifier (ID), File Allocation Table (FAT) information, an in-FAT record address, a file type, a directory path, a file name, a selection range, an object, an attribute, or information including an attribute. The various information items are managed using a member management table in which member data including the identifier information and detailed information is stored.